Homes having a width substantially that of one highway lane's width are fairly popular and are called mobile homes. Because these homes can be assembled at a remote site, they benefit from economy of scale -n production line manufacturing and are then transported to parks on removeable wheels. Mobile home parks, in turn, are attractive to many people because of the relative modest costs. Typically a park has at a minimum a concrete slab for automobile parking, gas and electric service and running water and sewer hook-ups.
Because mobile homes are limited -n their width by the lane width on highways, it is a common practice to take two or more such mobile homes and orient them side by side. Once the sides of the two mobile homes have been interconnected, an occupant has a residence with a sufficient width dimension to comfortably accomodate most furniture and appliance groupings.
It is the orientation process which is the subject of the instant invention. Curiously, while the prior art is fairly rich with attempts to overcome the known difficulties in orienting adjacent mobile homes, the practice in the industry is to still orient the second mobile home with respect to the first by primitive and dangerous means.
For example, the fourteen year old patent to Torrey succinctly chronicals the current state of the art of mobile home positioning in his background of the invention. The second mobile home is supported on jacks Which are pivoted to "walk" the second mobile home unit to the first. It is submitted that the Torrey device did not find commercial acceptance because, among other things, the hydraulic jacks 28, 30 which vertically orient the unit occupy too much space. In order for a mobile home positioning device to have utility for all job applications, the positioner must be capable of having an overall height of less than 12 inches when collapsed for clearance.
The two patents to Becker reflect this awareness. The later issued patent overcomes the problem of vertically extensible hydraulic cylinders by using a "pantograph" --type linkage. However, lateral translation of the mobile home (i.e. transverse to the longitudinal axis) involves movement of the entire hoist via the endless track units. Thus, the load supporting pads (having rollers) are initially fixed for the spacing of the support beams on the bottom of the mobile home and thereafter remain fixed with respect to their position on the hoist. Thus, incremental adjustment in moving the mobile unit close to the stationary mobile unit is done by an operator who cannot see the actual docking operation.
The following patents reflect the state of the art and are tendered to discharge applicant's acknowledged duty to disclose prior art. The relevance of the patents which are not discussed is less than which have been discussed herein above
______________________________________ 4,106,634 Becker 3,817,401 Becker 3,796,334 Torrey 4,417,841 Chadwick 4,569,236 Le Boeuf 4,408,739 Buschsel 4,372,572 Verschage 4,304,518 Carder 3,666,127 Guyaux 2,931,519 Beach 3,233,768 Turturro 3,411,637 Vander Lely 3,561,628 Melin 2,828,027 Stevenson ______________________________________